The Cardiovascular Health Education Program: assessing the impact on rural and urban adolescents' health knowledge

In this research study, a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design was used to assess the impact of the Cardiovascular Health Education Program (CHEP) on the cardiovascular health knowledge of grade eight adolescents. A total of 146 adolescents participated in study, with 88 in the experimental group and 58 in the control group. One-hundred two of the adolescents resided in a rural region and 44 resided in an urban region in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The findings from this study indicate that the CHEP did have a significant positive impact on the cardiovascular health knowledge of the rural adolescents, but it did not have a comparable impact on the cardiovascular health knowledge of the urban adolescents. The findings also indicate that there was no significant difference between rural and urban cardiovascular health knowledge prior to implementing the program. These findings support the need for implementation of the CHEP within this population. This study also shows that nurses can design, implement, and evaluate community-based health promotion programs for targeted populations.